Lit Hub Weekly: November 25 – 29, 2024

TODAY: In 1900, Oscar Wilde dies. 

• Merve Emre and Adam Dalva discuss how George Gissing’s The Odd Women defied both social and literary norms. | Lit Hub Criticism
• 2024 MacArthur Fellows Jericho Brown, Ling Ma, Jason Reynolds, and Juan Felipe Herrera, talk writing, book recommendations, and more. | Lit Hub
• Ed Simon on Sven Birkerts’ The Guttenberg Elegies and why reading remains fundamental in this historical moment. | Lit Hub Technology
• “When I write, I do not make big plans, I have the text in me.” Ayşegül Sert interviews Werner Herzog. | Lit Hub In Conversation
• Quentin Meillassoux on music, Stéphane Mallarmé’s poetry, and the void. | The Paris Review
• If you’re thinking about writing a letter to an author, Alexander Chee urges you to do it. | The Boston Globe
• “Their pain is still my pain.” Asmaa Yassin on the women she left behind in Gaza. | The Nation
• “The poetry written in dark times is proof of something stronger than hope — a faith in the possibility of a world where things could be otherwise.” Orlando Reade meditates on defeat, hope, and Paradise Lost. | Jacobin
• Julia Webster Ayulo explores the work of the forensic linguists using grammar, syntax and vocabulary to help crack cold cases. | The Dial
• “There’s plenty of plot in the book — and it’s one of those books most people will have trouble putting down — but the action is not, in a sense, where the action is.” Jonathan Franzen talks to Adam Moss about writing The Corrections. | Vulture
• “With all this emphasis on the contents of the story—that it be serviceable to the point of literal disbelief—the form in which it’s told falls by the wayside.” Tajja Isen wonders why readers and publishers are turning away from memoir. | The Walrus
• Kimberley D. McKinson considers monsters, mythology, and the apocalyptic promises of big tech. | Public Books
• “Art was his medium—consequently he inherited its millennia of baggage.” Daniel Felsenthal on the letters of Joe Brainard. | The Baffler
• Jacqueline Woodson, Weike Wang, and more present stories of Thanksgiving (composed on napkins). | Esquire

Also on Lit Hub:

On The Question of Palestine’s enduring legacy • Martha White remembers what her grandfather E.B. White loved about New York • What young journalists can learn from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Message • Why indie bookstores and small presses are the backbone of the literary ecosystem • Juhea Kim talks to Jane Ciabattari about isolation, ballet, and writing • Stephanie Gorton on systemic sexism in 19th century America • Read “Portrait of My Mother Studying for Her Citizenship Exam,” a poem by Eduardo Martínez-Leyva •  These 11 new books are out today • Samina Ali provides some advice for confronting your writerly fears • These are November’s best book covers